


Forbidden Fruit

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Biblical Themes (Abrahamic Religions), Depressed Spencer Reid, F/M, Forbidden Love, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Spencer Reid, Love Confessions, Obsession, Pining, Professor Reid, Professor Spencer Reid, Sad Ending, Sad Spencer Reid, Self-Insert, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Teacher-Student Relationship, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Professor Reid takes a bite of the forbidden fruit in the form of his student, and promptly learns why Adam choked on it.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	Forbidden Fruit

There are many theories about where the Garden of Eden was located, assuming if it actually existed in this realm at all. My logical mind told me that it was most likely located in what we now call the Middle East based on several indicators in both the Biblical and Quranic narrative.

However, as I stood at the front of my classroom, staring down at a girl with an extended hand and a smile that rivaled the sun, I felt strongly that I had located the garden in the middle of Washington, DC.

I could lie and say there was nothing special about her, but it would be a disservice. The truth was that every aspect of her was special. She was unique in both her simplicity and complexity. It was the way she smiled without ever losing the depths hidden in her eyes. I didn’t fall in love with her at first sight because I don’t believe such a thing exists. Instead, I fell for her slowly, cautiously, and with full resistance to the idea.

I didn’t want to fall in love with her. I shouldn’t have fallen in love with her.

But I did.

There are many theories about what the forbidden fruit was, assuming that it is something we would be able to recognize. As a researcher and scientist, I’ve always found vague historical references to be thrilling. After all, the answer is in the past, and we’ll likely never know for certain.

But if I can’t know the truth, how could I compare it to her? As the days went on, the urge to deify her grew stronger. I couldn’t tell if the way lights haloed around her was a delusion or exhaustion or just plain love, but I couldn’t look away. Each time she approached me, my mind latched on to a theory of the forbidden fruit. Whether they were cautionary reminders or twisted expressions of an unhealthy obsession with a girl who would certainly never feel the same, I indulged in those theories.

Here is what I found.

**Apple** :

There is no theory more iconic than that of the apple plucked from the tree. It’s so entwined in our understanding of the world and human nature that we named a piece of our anatomy after it.

The Adam’s Apple, they say, was created by man’s indulgence in the forbidden fruit. His body had simply rejected what it was never meant to have, lodging in his throat and choking him for the rest of his days.

I often felt like that when she was around; like I was suffocating and choking on things left unsaid. Some days I swore one wrong move would dislodge the reminder from my throat, leaving me spilling my heart out to someone who didn’t have the capability nor willingness to give it back.

An apple seemed a fitting fruit for her, considering the multitudes of nuances in flavor and color. Complex was a good way to describe her. But still, it was difficult to imagine a world where she could ever be sour.

**Banana** : 

Because she was sweet. The smell of her perfume stuck to the roof of my mouth, the residue on the sides of my lips caramelizing as my whole face burned from my thoughts of her.

She was bright and soft and a symbol for better days. The curve of the fruit reminded me of the one often found on her lips. I couldn’t decide, though, if she reminded me of the banana because she shared the color with the tropical sun needed for it to thrive.

Perhaps this fruit was too fragile. She didn’t strike me as someone who would spoil so easily.

**Fig** :

By contrast, she very much resembled the hardy, ornamental fig. I don’t mean to say that she was only beautiful— she was so much more than that. There is no shortage of references to or depictions of figs in religious texts.

Most notably, they are often linked to female sexuality and, more specifically, fertility. But I couldn’t allow myself to follow that thought very far, for my own sanity. Although I could easily and vividly imagine her as a mother, it seemed downright villainous to imagine anyone desecrating something so seemingly innocent.

**Grape** :

What would she be like when she was older, though? I had to wonder if she would grow sweeter with maturation like the grapes harvested off the vine. They had such duality; a symbol of inner transformation on one spectrum and debauchery on the other.

I hadn’t indulged in alcohol in several years, but every day I saw her, I was absolutely drunk on her. I should have known better. It was foolish to assume that she wouldn’t be equally addicting.

**Mushroom** :

Intoxication, it seemed, was a theme among the religious scholars.

And like eating from _Amanita muscaria_ , I see visions when I touch her. They are so vivid they almost feel real. Although in reality our hands barely touched, I could feel her fingers winding between mine and pulling me closer to her. Her laughter is even more enchanting, the sound surrounding me in an embrace much like the one that I would find in her arms.

When I looked at her lips, I felt them on my jaw. Try as I might to move them just centimeters over, they never seemed to land on my lips. I theorized that it was because my mind knew that it would never get it exactly right. And if it did, I would never get that feeling out of my mind.

I couldn’t kiss her, even in a vision, because my mind knew that I would never return from it. 

**Pomegranate** :

Maybe that’s why she was more like a pomegranate, the infamous fruit that trapped the goddess Persephone to Hades for winter each year. But in that condemnation, she would reign as Queen. It made sense, then, why the calyx is shaped as a crown.

Persephone’s disposition is often considered well mirrored in the blood colored fruit, which was both sweet and numerous in its seeds. My Persephone was very much the same. Every interaction, every word, every glance, took root inside of me. I could only hope that the myths that determined it a symbol of good luck were truer than those that said it signaled an end.

**Wheat** :

The queen of hell was also the goddess of grain, a botanical berry that not many would consider a fruit. It is the same type of fruit, in fact, as the one I began my study with. It seemed fitting, to end on something as simple and subversive as wheat.

In the traditional Hebrew, they refer to it as _khitah_ , which many consider to be a pun on the word “ _khet_ ,” meaning “sin.” It couldn’t be that she was the sin; it just wouldn’t be fair to describe her in such a way.

No, she was sinful in the way my heart wanted to indulge in her the same way our bodies crave the carbohydrates that the diet industry has deemed evil. She wasn’t evil, though.

I was.

I was the one who took a woman who was just trying to get by and made her complicit in all of my fantasies. Was it wrong, though, if she never knew? Because I couldn’t tell her. Not just because there would never be a right time or place, but because a rejection from her very well might kill me.

Then again, wasn’t that the point of the forbidden fruit?

——

The end of the semester came too soon, but how could it not? The closer I got to the last day I would see her sleepy-faced yet dutifully following along with my words, the faster time seemed to move. I wished I could slow it down, to cherish those last few moments knowing that the last time she walked out my door would also have to be the last day I ever saw her.

It should have been the last day I ever thought of her, but that was never going to happen. It was always just pathetic wishful thinking. Logically I knew that she would haunt my waking dreams until my heart could find some other poor woman to fixate on.

Still, when the day did come, I found myself staring at the bright red exit sign hanging above the door more so than I looked at her. In a few weeks she would graduate and move on to do wonderful things with her life. She deserved to do that without having to deal with the professor who fell for her when she did nothing at all.

But as I got off the metro that day I was filled with the most crushing, overwhelming guilt. It was the kind that burned my throat and bit my tongue. I couldn’t tell where it had come from. Because as much as I wanted the sadness to be a result of me coming to my senses and accepting my imagined loss, I couldn’t ignore the loud voice screaming in my head that the true mistake had been never telling her the truth.

It didn’t matter anymore, though. That was what I repeated to myself, over and over again until I would hopefully listen. I reminded myself of the vastness of the universe, the billions of other people on this Earth and the infinite number of possibilities for the rest of my life.

If we were meant to be, it surely would have happened by now.

Right?

The streetlights reflected in the puddles of rain from the night before. Even that reminded me of her, with the fluorescent bulbs spreading across the almost imperceptible smog of the city. The white light lit my path much like her smile had led me through some of the worst months of my life. And suddenly that was all I could think of, my mind fixating on the memories of her laughing until I could almost hear them.

Until I could see her, standing in front of me in the center of a busy downtown, chewing idly on her nail and staring at her phone.

“Shit,” she muttered. Her voice cut through the noise, enchanting me for a moment too long. She must have felt my eyes on her, because before I could call her name, her head tilted to the side to spot me standing like an idiot in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Professor!” she cheerily shouted, waving me over with a less than graceful hand that I felt compelled to follow, anyway, “What are you doing here?”

“Uh... I live around here,” I eloquently replied.

“Oh. That makes sense.”

Silence stretched between us again, her eyes nervously dancing between me and the screen until she eventually broke into a fit of soft, melodious laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

She shrugged, cringing a bit before she explained, “I just had this idea that you were here to save me.”

“Save you?” I asked with my own nervous laughter. I wondered if she could tell that’s what it was, or if she really was none the wiser of how much she affected me. “Save you from what?” I enunciated clearly, still terrified of what she might interpret in my trembling voice.

“You know. Life in general.”

I didn’t know. Not really, anyway. She’d shared a bit of her life with me in the occasional office hours or student gatherings outside of class, but never enough for me to build a completely accurate profile of her current mental state. And, to some extent, that was by my design.

The more I knew about her, the deeper in love with her I would fall. That had never been clearer than it was in that moment, because before I could come up with a response, her ankle rolled in her heels, sending her stumbling over straight into my arms.

“A-Are you okay?” I asked while trying to get her back on her feet while also cherishing the way her warmth soaked straight through my jacket and burned my skin, “Are you… with someone?”

_Please say no_ , I thought before I corrected myself.

She deserved to be happy, and she wouldn’t be with me.

“Uh, yeah… People,” she mumbled. Her eyes continued to dart around her surroundings, which apparently yielded nothing helpful based on her heavy sigh. “I’m trying to find my way back to this girl’s place but DC’s layout is insanely complicated.”

“Do you need help?” I made the offer without thinking. If I’d thought about it for literally any period of time, I would have realized what a terrible idea it was. Because helping her meant dragging out the inevitable goodbye — it meant more chances for me to fall helplessly in love with her and gather more evidence for why I should never allow myself to forget her.

Luckily for my sanity, she seemed to recognize my discomfort and offered me another chance out.

“Honestly, I think I might just grab an Uber and go home,” she offered.

But, as before, my damned mouth spoke quicker than my mind could work.

“Don’t you live like 30 minutes away?”

Her mouth curled into a confused pout, her brows raising and alerting me that I’d said something unbelievably stupid. There was nothing quite as unsettling as a man knowing where you live when you hadn’t expressly told him. But in my defense, she sort of had.

“Sorry, you… mentioned it in class once,” I said with a similar confused grimace.

“Right. Eidetic memory thing,” she replied, the tension melting from her and being replaced with something else. I couldn’t tell if it was just wishful thinking, but she seemed relieved and a little… embarrassed?

“Yeah. Thirty minutes isn’t that bad. I’ve taken longer Ubers.”

I don’t know what overcame me, but the second she snuck her bottom lip between her teeth, my composure broke. Every deafening alarm bell in my mind silenced. I was only able to focus on the sound of her shaky breath as she pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

“Why don’t I just drive you?”

After a few slow blinks, she responded with a slow, “What?”

“I’m sorry if that’s inappropriate!” I damn near shouted, my tongue tripping over itself as I continued in my reckless stupidity, “I just… really don’t like the idea of you—“

I stopped myself in the middle of the word, but she’d already caught it. “The idea o-of one of my…. students drunk and alone with a stranger in their car for that long.”

Still chewing on her bottom lip, she inspected my increasingly uncomfortable body language that was practically screaming out every insecurity into the city. It should have made me even more panicked, but per usual, her presence had some sort of paradoxical effect on me. Despite being the object of my affections and the cause of my anxieties, I found myself calming down the longer I got lost in those wide doe-eyes.

“It’s a hazard of my job,” I mumbled at the same time she answered, “Oh, um… Yeah, sure.”

Then we both just stared at each other, processing the overlapping words. She had a lopsided smile that I tried not to read into as she repeated, “Sure, you can take me home, Professor.”

The butterflies bursting through my stomach were not at all welcome, but they swarmed away, nonetheless. It was a sentence I’d never heard her say. I’d never really expected to hear it, either. But it didn’t mean what it did in my fantasies, anyway.

I was taking her home so she would be safe. Away from crooked, idiotic, selfish men that didn’t deserve her presence.

If only she knew.

I cleared my throat and the thought from my mind before I gestured down the street. “We have to go to my apartment first.”

“Why?”

“To… get my car,” I chuckled, narrowing my eyes at her as I watched the embarrassment cover her cheeks. I wonder what thoughts were running through her mind, and if they at all reflected mine.

Because the truth was, my thoughts weren’t actually nefarious. They were so remarkably domestic that it almost seemed worse than base, animalistic instincts. They were too intimate. Dangerous. Wrong.

“Right. That makes sense,” she giggled, a warm smile blooming over her face to ward away the darkness of the night and my own thoughts.

That brief little song of her joy carried us through the streets. It felt so natural, so right to have her walking by my side that I had to keep my hands in my pockets to keep them from locking with hers. But eventually, after a few too-close-trips, she’d linked her arm with mine without even needing to ask.

Once we’d gotten to the car, we fell into a surprisingly comfortable quiet. She moved so freely in my space, tuning the radio and curling into the passenger seat in a way I would’ve normally warned against. It wasn’t the safest way for her to sit, but I couldn’t bring myself to correct the behavior when it meant she wouldn’t be looking at me anymore.

The drive to her apartment was too quick, time speeding up in her presence once again. Except this time, I could’ve sworn she felt it, too. Her steps to her front porch were so tiny and cautious, despite her arm finding its way in mine again.

But then we were at our destination. We were at our final goodbye.

Her arm slipped from mine one last time. On the way out, her fingers lingered against my arm until they couldn’t reach any longer. I didn’t move my hands, scared that they might betray me if I removed them before her door shut.

“Goodnight, (y/n),” I whispered, flashing one last bittersweet smile before I let her leave my sight.

For a few heartbreaking seconds, I listened to the nothingness taking over my body that was left colder without her pressed against my side.

Then it happened.

“Hey, Professor?” she called.

My body was already waiting for it, spinning back around with a much-too-quick reply.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For bringing me all the way here.” Her arms were still crossed over her chest, but she stepped closer to me. I saw her hand twitch, almost like she was stopping it from reaching out as she managed to mutter a quiet, “That was very kind of you.”

“Yeah, of course. I just wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

_Please, don’t let me leave,_ I begged her, my feet continuing to shuffle closer and my heart pulling me forward with every beat. _I’m not ready to say goodbye_.

“As a student?” she asked with what I assumed was sarcasm. I’d never been very good at detecting it, but the smirk on her face usually accompanied a joke. I didn’t always understand those either, but I always knew when to laugh.

This only sort of felt like one of those times. So, I settled for a subtle smile and a chuckle as I nodded slowly, “… Yeah, as a student.”

She waited, her hands finally falling from her chest. I could see her calculating something, the gears turning over in her eyes that flickered between my hands and my eyes. Eventually, her hands followed. Slowly but surely, she smoothed her hands over the thin fabric of my jacket sleeves.

My breath caught in my throat, but she didn’t stop. If anything, her hands grew more insistent and her body drew even closer.

“Are you sure?” she asked. I barely heard it over the rushing of blood and the frantic, irregular beating of my heart.

Was I sure of what? I was sure of many things. Most notably, I was absolutely, positively certain that I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to give her the answer she wanted, even if it was a lie. I wanted her to get the closure she deserved, to move on and leave me behind so she could do everything she was meant to do.

But those words never came. I stood there, stuck longing and hurting and hoping for her to do something so I could give her what she deserved.

And then, as she grew tired of that chaotic silence, she replaced the words I refused to say with her own lips. Her hands slid over my shoulder and my body gave into her with a swift, almost unbearable relief.

She was the forbidden fruit, and I was just a man.

Her kiss was shy and clumsy despite her being the one to initiate it. It was exactly how I’d always imagined, although in my fantasies my hands were warmer. When they came to cup her cheeks, I was honestly worried that the chill might make the flushing fade.

But it didn’t. Although she let out a tiny, almost imperceptible gasp at my frozen fingers, her lips curled into a smile seconds later. My heart felt like it would burst when her tongue slid over my bottom lip.

I let the bitter sting of the liquor on her tongue serve as a reminder of just how dangerous it was for me to indulge in her. A reminder that I would ignore, pulling her even closer and kissing her even harder and hoping that it might leave an impression even after I was gone.

There were so many words to try and describe the experience, but none would ever be enough. As I ran through hundreds of thousands of options to try and explain how it felt, her hands grabbed hold of my coat.

Then, the only word to describe it was: _over_.

It was over.

I didn’t open my eyes at first. I was too scared of what I would find when I did. I heard her labored breathing, and I felt her hands leave me. Begrudgingly, I let mine fall, too.

But when she started to take a step back, I couldn’t stop myself any longer. Those hands that had been itching to hold her all night had gotten a taste, and now I was lost in the most unbearable yearning I’d ever felt in my life. I grabbed hold of her wrists, stopping her from leaving with a grip just tight enough to communicate how strongly I felt.

“I’m in love with you,” I blurted out. I wanted it to be more graceful, but it was never going to be. When you felt something as much as I felt those five words, there was no controlling them.

With a confused shock, she just sort of… stared. Lost yet amused, she started to giggle again as she said, “Very funny, Professor.”

There was no controlling it. No matter how much my self-preservation screamed at me to stop, my heart had already started on its tirade. My lips happily followed as I poured my heart out to that poor girl who still managed to smile.

“No, I mean it— I-I’m in love with you. I know, I know that sounds ridiculous, and that it isn’t right for me to feel this way, let alone tell you but I just…”

When I paused to take a breath, I felt her hands turn over under my grip. It was the only thing distracting me from the way her eyes had started to glisten under the yellow porch light. Once I’d caught that glimmer, my traitorous mouth started to urge her again.

“You are _so_ beautiful. It physically hurts when I look at you because I know that you would never want to be with me, and it’s unfair and stupid but looking away seems just as painful a-and reckless. Every day I’m surrounded by so much darkness and hate,” I said with a crackling voice and tears in my eyes to match hers, “You are the only thing I’ve ever looked at that was never either of those things.”

After I managed to stop my tongue for a moment, I noticed the way she trembled. Her whole body shook with breath and resistance in tensed muscles. But for some reason, she didn’t look upset.

She was… Scared.

“Please… I—“

Her hand shot up, covering my lips before they could say any other regrettable things. With a crooked smile still hanging on her cheeks, she leaned forward until she could press her forehead against mine.

“Shhh,” she hushed, turning her hands to grab hold of mine and pull me close like we had been before. Her eyes stayed shut, and I eventually followed suit.

I almost didn’t feel her lips as they brushed against mine again. The feeling was faint and delicate, but enough for my body to follow.

When I couldn’t find her again, though, I finally managed to whisper, “Why?”

“You know why,” she answered almost immediately. But then she paused, taking a sharp inhale that was mostly a mixture of our shared breath.

We listened to the sounds of crickets and frantic heartbeats punctuated with her quiet, staticky voice saying, “It sucks, you know?”

I opened my eyes when I asked, “What?”

She quickly followed suit, staring so intently that I swore she could read my mind. She could see all the imagined futures and fantasies and feelings that I’d tried to keep from her. They spilled out between us like there was a hole in my heart.

It felt like that, too.

“If only one of us had been born just a little bit different,” she said with a weak, bitter laugh, “We really could’ve been something.”

Before the words were even processed, she was gone. Her body left mine so fast that I was left wondering if she’d ever even touched me at all. Her eyes never left me, though, even as I stumbled forward in the dark and implicitly begged her not to let me leave.

But that was the thing about the forbidden fruit, wasn’t it? It was never meant to last. It was an indulgence that was to be swiftly and powerfully punished. It was a delectable, irresistible sin that left Adam choking for eternity.

It was her, finally opening her door and retreating back to the garden she came from, and where I would never be allowed again.

“Bye, Spen—” she started quietly before quickly correcting herself.

“Bye, Professor.”


End file.
